Augmented Reality You Can Already Use

Augmented reality (AR) adds digital information or images to a live view of the real world, usually through a phone camera, glasses or a headset. Unlike virtual reality, which replaces your surroundings, AR keeps you in the real environment. Many people already use AR without calling it that.

On your phone today

• Furniture and home apps: IKEA introduced an app in 2017 that lets you place true-to-scale furniture in your room through the phone camera. Many furniture and paint retailers now offer similar tools.
• Visual search and translation: Google Lens can translate signs and menus in place, identify plants and landmarks, and copy text from paper.
• Walking directions: Google Maps' Live View overlays arrows on the street in front of you, which helps in places where GPS struggles to show which way you're facing.
• Measuring: measuring apps on iPhone and Android estimate lengths and room dimensions. iPhone Pro models with a LiDAR sensor do this more accurately.
• Games and filters: Pokémon Go, released in 2016, brought AR to hundreds of millions of players. Social media face filters are also a form of AR.

How AR knows where things are

For digital objects to stay "attached" to a table or floor, a device has to understand the space around it. Phones do this by tracking visual features in the camera image while measuring movement with motion sensors, a technique known as simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). Apple's ARKit and Google's ARCore, released in 2017, made this capability available to app developers on ordinary phones, which is why AR features became common in shopping and design apps. Depth sensors such as LiDAR improve accuracy, especially in dim rooms.

Shopping and try-on

Virtual try-on has become one of the most popular uses. Beauty retailers offer apps that show lipstick or hair color shades on your face through the camera, and eyewear sellers let you see frames on your face before ordering. Retailers say these tools help reduce returns, though how realistic colors look depends on lighting and screen quality.

Headsets and glasses

Apple Vision Pro, launched in the US in February 2024 at $3,499, blends apps and video into the room around you, a mix of AR and VR often called mixed reality. Meta's Quest headsets offer passthrough modes that show the room with digital objects layered on top. Lighter smart glasses, such as Meta's Ray-Ban glasses, focus on cameras, audio and an AI assistant, with some newer models adding a small display. Everyday AR glasses that look like regular glasses and show rich graphics are still in development.

At work

• Manufacturing and repair: technicians wear headsets that display step-by-step instructions next to the machine they're fixing, or connect to a remote expert who can draw annotations in their view.
• Warehouses: AR glasses can show pickers where to go and which item to collect.
• Surgery: the FDA cleared Augmedics' xvision headset in 2019, which lets spine surgeons see a 3D view of a patient's anatomy overlaid on the surgical field.
• Architecture and construction: teams view building plans overlaid on a site to spot clashes before work begins.

In cars

Head-up displays project speed and navigation onto the windshield so drivers don't look down. Some newer systems overlay navigation arrows that appear to sit on the road ahead, a form of AR designed to reduce distraction.

Education and museums

Museums use AR to show how ruins or fossils originally looked, or to add context to exhibits through a phone. Teachers use AR apps to let students explore 3D models of the solar system, molecules or the human body on their desks. These work best as a supplement to hands-on learning rather than a replacement for it.

Privacy and safety concerns

AR devices with cameras raise questions about recording people without their knowledge, which is why many smart glasses show a light when recording. Using AR while walking or driving can also distract from real hazards, and some early AR games led to accidents involving players who weren't watching where they were going.

Trying it yourself

The easiest starting point is a phone you already own. Try placing a piece of furniture in a room with a retailer's app, translating a sign with Google Lens, or using Live View for walking directions in an unfamiliar area.